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EX3, Multicam, Logging, Synching
Greetings,
I have a few questions related to a project I am preparing to edit. It has been some time since I’ve had to tackle these sort of technical concerns, so I’m a little rusty, and some of this stuff is just new to me.
We have a documentary that was shot on the EX3. Field capture of the cards was handled as described elsewhere on this site, using shotput pro to hard drives, etc. During the shoot, we had two cameras running simultaneously, and 18-20 channels of individually recorded audio, all of which was recorded using the same time code via some sort of box/ generator.
Now we’re ready to start logging/ capturing/ synching.
1) At what point do we sync the audio to picture? Due to the nature of the shoot (many individually mic’d people in a large room), I doubt a detailed log can really be made until we have the audio tracks synched up with picture (onboard camera mic is often useless). On the other hand, don’t we need to break the clips up individually in LOG/ CAPTURE just to get them into the system? (In the past, I’ve always cut using camera audio and saved the synching for after picture lock.)
In other words, we’re dealing with 8-10 hours of footage per camera, per- day, in one room using the same individuals. I’m not sure it’s going to be obvious to the assistant editors where to split the footage into individual clips without all the audio tracks, because a lot of it will have to do with what subjects are saying on- screen.
Should they import entire cards of footage as single clips, synch them, and then sub-clip?
2) In the past, I’ve had assistants build a detailed log in EXCEL for eventual import into FCP. Are there any issues associated with this pathway given that the footage is card- based, as opposed to on tape?
3) How clunky is FCP editing going to get with 18 audio tracks in the timeline? Should I consolidate to fewer tracks? The editing station is a brand new quad core (2.66) with 8 gigs of RAM, and I’ve never dealt with this many tracks of audio from start to finish in FCP.
Thank you very much for your replies.
-Ed